REPLICATING THE BUSINESS ECOSYSTEM – THE NEXT LEVEL OF DIGITAL TWINNING

By Elton Bondi, CEO of Business Science Corporation (BSC)

Although a relatively
new term in business, Digital Twinning is an established concept in engineering.

In simple terms, a Digital Twin is software that is coded to replicate and behave exactly like a real-world object or system. An “object” could, for example, be an engineering asset such as a turbine, a truck, a specific production system, an industry-wide supply chain, or a market – anything with characteristics that can be quantified and measured.

Different
mathematical modelling techniques, such as equation-based modelling,
simulation, statistical modelling and machine learning combine to ensure that all
attributes of the real world are accurately replicated in extreme detail and
high fidelity. A combination of different technologies, including 3D visualisation
and Internet of Things [IoT] sensors, synchronise the real world with its synthetic
version or digital twin.

Examples of
characteristics that would be modelled in a Digital Twin of, for instance, something
like a turbine, would include performance attributes like speed, output, and fuel
consumption; physical factors like vibration, temperature and pressure; as well
as the material properties such as the tensile strength of metals, abrasiveness
and hardness. Modelling these (and many other) attributes will result in
software that will behave exactly like its real-world counterpart. A well-calibrated
Digital Twin is able to inform a wide range of design, operational deployment and
commercial questions. For example, how would the productivity of an asset
improve if the operating parameters were slightly altered, and how would these
new operating parameters impact maintenance costs and ultimately total return
on investment?

Digital
Twins are effectively used for design work; or to discover optimal operating procedures;
for diagnostic purposes and even for prediction, such as determining equipment
failure.

An exciting application of the Digital Twin is
to replicate not only a specific asset, or process, but an entire enterprise,
thanks to IoT.

The enterprise
Digital Twin will translate the plethora of metrics that IoT devices collect
from across an enterprise (and market) in order to accurately calculate the
economic consequences of existing or proposed changes to policies and
operations, as well as provide a detailed diagnosis of underlying causes of
past important events. A twin can then also tell management how best to improve
a situation in real time.

Industry experts predict that by 2021 at least
50% of enterprises in the US will be using Digital Twins and this will yield
productivity improvements of more than 10%.

The first time our
company applied Digital Twinning, we were fortunate to yield a sustained 25%
improvement in our client’s operating efficiency. However, like all promising 4th
Industrial Revolution technologies, generating value is as much about how technology
is implemented as it is about the technology itself.

In more practical terms, we deploy Enterprise Digital
Twins to business in order to enable and achieve three things:

Validate plans – understanding in
detail the chances of attaining business objectives, and the greatest risk areas.

Optimise plans – Once we have mapped
the art of the likely, and the science of the possible. We are able to
understand how well a business could perform if changes were made, both in theory
and then realistically.

Merge synthetic and real worlds to build
a real-time solution – such a solution constantly tells decision makers what’s happening
in the enterprise, why, what’s likely to happen and how to improve the current
reality.

Digital
Twins integrate the engineering, operational and commercial realms with detail
and accuracy and in a holistic way. The result is a technology that constantly
reveals in real time, both intended and – importantly – unintended consequences
of decisions, or of changes in the environment.

Simply put,
digital twinning is about high fidelity, highly accurate real-time modelling. A
Digital Twin is an intelligence asset built to ensure greater efficiency and
effectiveness.

It has
specific application in all physical manufacturing processes, in back-office
administration processes, in call centres, and even in measuring and predicting
market response to different campaigns.

With massive increases in computing power, and in the number and type of IoT sensors, the Digital Twin concept is being tested in a wide range of other applications. For example, the biological-health Digital Twin. Imagine having a twin of your body comprising all your physiological parameters, and your full biological and family history. Such a “twin” would be able to predict both your short-term wellness and longer-term longevity based on, amongst other things, what you consume, your activities, your heart rate, your blood type and pressure, your body temperature, even real-time analysis of blood and waste matter!

The future
is exciting for those who sincerely embrace this technology. For early adopters,
the enterprise Digital Twin will provide a significant competitive advantage. Today,
most business decision makers will understand that great insight and value is
lost in averages and in monthly planning spreadsheets.
This technology is detailed, comprehensive and
it is real time. Digital twinning technology will be a must-have addition to
the arsenal of any business seeking to prosper.